The infamous Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi side bet

Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi has taken to Twitter to speak out against fellow poker player, Giorgio Medici, after he failed to pay up having lost a proposition bet at the World Series earlier this year.

Proposition bets are side bets – that is to say, they are not part of the official WSOP games and are, in fact, illegal. Despite the fact that this usually means they aren’t put into writing, they are nearly always honoured, as no professional player wants to risk being extradited from the poker community.

Medici had reportedly bet Mizrachi that he wouldn’t win a bracelet during the WSOP event with odds of five-to-one, but lost when Mizrachi won $1,451,527 during event number 45: $50k The Poker Players Championship. However, it seems that Medici filed for bankruptcy soon after, tweeting Mizrachi to say: “I am sorry but certain circumstances came up and I had to file bankruptcy. I listed you to in the list and I know you received letter from the law office Bricks. Again I am sorry but there is nothing I can do.”

Mizrachi stood to win $100,000 from the bet but, to make matters worse, he had also sold $9,500 of the action to his friends. Although he kept his end of the bargain and paid them, this then meant that the deal cost Mizrachi a further $47,500.

With WSOP unwilling to recognise such illegitimate side bets, and Medici apparently unwilling to accept Mizrachi’s offer of a payment plan, it seems that ‘The Grinder’ may never see the money which he is owed. However, by outing Medici on websites such as Twitter, he may be able to warn other members of the poker-playing community, in the hope that they do not suffer a similar fate.